We SEO types rely on Google for some useful sets of data; things like search trends, keyword ideas, even insights into search intent. Because of this reliance we sometimes have an almost unhealthy interest in what they may or may not be changing.
All it takes is something like an algorithm tweak, or a change in how SERPs are delivered and the effects can be profound, for our data gathering and for the performance of a website. This is why today is proving to be pretty interesting.
The first item is about a week old, and Gary-Adam Shannon does a bang-up job of explaining it. In short Google amended their keyword tool, and now it shows measurably different search volumes. There was no announcement, it just got updated.
Now, let’s get up to date. A fellow SEO pointed out this piece by Peter Young. It touches on items that could (avoids getting hysterical) mean some hefty changes to aspects of the SEO’s routine. For me the most interesting is the suggestion that the SERPs might become fully AJAX in the near future.
Users might notice no change at all, or maybe get a snappier page with some functionality mods, but it could play havoc with rank checking software and analytics.
The mark-up/code of an AJAX SERP is reported to contain no URLs (at least according to “suzukik” in this WebmasterWorld thread). With no URLs in the mark-up the current breed of rank checkers will have nothing to report.
AJAX URLs are going to contain all the useful/readable query data after a # in the URL, and its that hash that is the problem.
The URL of the search results page is sent as referrer data to the site when its visited, and so can be used by an analytics package to gather that keyword data (its part of the URL e.g. http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=atelier+seo).
An AJAX SERP URL its likely to be like this http://www.google.co.uk/#q=atelier+seo, and as browsers don’t send anything after a # in a referrer string, all an analytics package will see is this http://www.google.co.uk/, so there’ll be no keyword data to gather.
Of course this is all hypothesis, based on conjecture and rumour, but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored. The fact is that something is afoot, so its best to be at least a little prepared.
UPDATE
Google’s press conference to be shown live today at http://www.youtube.com/google from 17:30 GMT